American Rivers outlines Marianna dam-removal project
Scott Beveridge/Observer-Reporter
In this 2017 photo, the state Department of Transportation used concrete and stone to shore up Main Street in Marianna after high water flows worked like a grinding stone on the hillside below Marianna Dam along Ten Mile Creek.
The Deep River in North Carolina before the removal of Carbonton Dam
The Deep River in North Carolina after the removal of Carbonton Dam
Lisa Hollingsworth-Segedy
MARIANNA – The nation’s top river conservation organization envisions a new public park with improved access to Ten Mile Creek in Marianna after an antiquated low-head dam is removed from the stream, possibly next year.
The group known as American Rivers also plans to perform streambank restoration work there, similar to the improvements California University of Pennsylvania has made to Pike Run since last fall with the placement of logs to create small dams and underwater caves where fish can hide, said Lisa Hollingsworth-Segedy, director of river restoration at the charitable organization’s Pittsburgh district office.
“We just don’t go in there and rip out a dam and walk away,” Hollingsworth-Segedy said.
She said American Rivers has removed 100 dams in her region, and most of the projects were met with emotional opposition from those who love the pretty waterfalls the low-head dams create.
State Rep. Bud Cook said the water in the reservoir is needed by the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling industry and the dam draws tourists to the old coal-mining town.
“There is a long list of reasons to restore it,” said Cook, R-Daisytown, while recognizing there is no state money available to repair the crumbling dam.
Such dams are essentially concrete walls built across streams to create reservoirs without spillways. These types of dams are notoriously deadly, Hollingsworth-Segedy said.
Pennsylvania led the nation with 71 drownings at low-head dams since the 1950s, according to a 2015 study performed at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Iowa ranked number two in the study with 57 drownings
The rush of water at the bases of these dams creates a hydraulic current, which “drags swimmers and boaters into the churning water and they drown,” Hollingsworth-Segedy said.
“It recirculates,” said Marianna Council President Wesley Silva, who was among four council members who voted April 12 on a motion inviting American Rivers to remove the dam at no cost to local taxpayers.
“If you get too close to the dam, the water pushes you under, throws you out and then sucks you back in and you keep churning,” Silva said.
Newspaper archives show that four drownings have taken place at the dam since 1940, and Silva believes the number is higher than that. The most recent drowning at the dam was the July 2006 death of Michael A. Hirosky, 47, of Marianna, whose body was discovered by two people who were preparing to take a dip in the water.
Seventy-two of these types of dams have been removed in Pennsylvania in the past five years, said Rick Levis, spokesman for the state Fish & Boat Commission. In all, 285 of them have been removed in the state since 1995, he said.
Pennsylvania probably is still home to about 5,000 low-head dams, he added.
American Rivers removed the Ellsworth No. 2 dam in 2011 in Washington County and created a complex wetlands in that area, Hollingsworth-Segedy said. It also removed one in Brave, Greene County, in a 2010 project that reduced the flooding threat along Dunkard Creek.
Ellsworth Council President Mark Segedi praised the work American Rivers performed in the dam-removal project in that borough along Pigeon Creek.
“We couldn’t be any happier,” Segedi said.
He said the dam had breached and drained the reservoir after the wall became backed up with silt before American Rivers arrived in the borough.
“They came in and said, ‘Sign these papers and we’ll do everything,'” Segedi said.
He said the work was completed with heavy equipment within two days.
“They did a beautiful job,” he said.
Segedi said the dam was dangerous, and that twins drowned in the reservoir around 1990.
These types of dams were built a century ago when there were no state or federal regulations to guide their construction, said Gary Stokum, district manager of the Washington County Conservation District, which is assisting Marianna in obtaining the proper permits to demolish the dam from the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The dam in Marianna was built to create a public water supply for the borough, which no longer operates a water plant.
American Rivers makes the argument that the dam needs to be removed because it is no longer “a critical piece of infrastructure,” Hollingsworth-Segedy said.
The dam contributes to erosion that has been washing out the base of Main Street, and it has had a negative effect on the creek’s aquatic life, partly because it makes it impossible for fish to travel upstream to spawn. The creek at the dam has been undercutting the base of a hillside during flooding like a “grinding wheel” in an area that supports Main Street, said Joseph Szczur, district director of the state Department of Transportation.
“You could actually stand under the rock that is part of the hill and embankment,” Szczur said.
He said PennDOT filled the void with 15 yards of concrete and added stone to the embankment.
PennDOT also is using a hydraulic expert to study the area.
“The power of water is amazing,” he said.
“Here’s the problem – at some point Mother Nature is going to say that you can have a dam or a road, but you can’t have both,” Hollingsworth-Segedy added. “Every time it rains hard it’s going to carve out more of that slope.”
Borough council has been meeting with opposition about the dam-removal project from the Marianna Outdoorsmen Association, which has improved access to the creek near the waterfall where it sponsors a popular canoe and kayak race every spring.
“That dam is part of our heritage,” said Ed Thomas, association president. “Removing it would diminish the hopes of this town.”
He said the stream “would turn into a path … that removing the dam would destroy what we have done in the last 11 years.”
However, American Rivers believes the stream without a dam would not harm the boat races, and that it would allow kayakers to navigate straight through the area, Hollingsworth-Segedy said.
“It’ll be more useful to kayakers,” she said. “It won’t change the flow. The stream will have a stable channel again.”